The Effects of Rivalry on Competitive Performance

Indianapolis, IN

Rivalry is operationally defined as a subjective competitive relationship between actors that involves increased psychological involvement and perceived stakes of competition, independent of the objective characteristics (Kilduff et al. 2010). The current study is investigating the effect of rivalry on competitive performance. During this study, college students will complete as many math problems as possible in three minutes under rivalry, non-rivalry, or non-competitive conditions. Specifically, participants are told that they are part of an institutional investigation and that their school's scores will be compared to those at a rival school, a non-rival school, or no other school at all. Previous theorizing regarding the Yerkes-Dodson law and its application to competitive performance and previous investigations of the impact of high-stakes competition on performance suggest that participants in the rival condition will have lower scores on the math task due to excess physiological arousal. Data collection for the project is on-going.